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immigration, justice and security, postal, procurement, regulation, participation, revenue and customs, and transport. As an effort toward reliability, the research was conducted in a two-week period. The Accenture report, however, only focuses on 22 countries. The Accenture study omits numerous countries throughout the world, as well as many of the top performing governments in e-governance. Similarly, a study conducted by Capgemini, on behalf of the European Commission, is limited in international focus (Capgemini, 2005). This study is limited to nations in the European Union and only utilizes 20 basic public services as measures in the research study.
The methodology is split between studying services to citizens (12) and services to businesses (8). An additional worldwide e-government survey is conducted by the Waseda University Institute of E-Government in Japan. There methodology includes 26 indicators as well as a component for surveying the Chief Information Officer of each country (World E-Gov Forum, 2007). Similar to the UN and Taubman Center studies, the Accenture, Capgemini, and Waseda University studies focus on national government Web sites, a distinguishing aspect from our research.
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each municipality, we have equally weighted each of the five categories so as not to skew the research in favor of a particular category (regardless of the number of questions in each category). The dichotomous measures in the “service” and “citi- zen participation” categories correspond with values on our four point scale of “0”
or “3”; dichotomous measures in “security/ privacy” or “usability” correspond to ratings of “0” or “1” on the scale.
In this research, the main city homepage is defined as the official Web site where information about city administration and online services are provided by the city.
The city Web site includes Web sites about the city council, mayor, and executive branch of the city. Based on the concept above, this research evaluated the official Web sites of each city selected. Nineteen of 100 cities, however, do not have official city Web sites or were not accessible during the survey period: ten in Africa (71%), seven in Asia (22%), and two in North America (20%). As a result, this research evaluated only 81 cities of the 100 cities initially selected. Our research examined local government services using an e-governance model of increasingly sophisti- cated e-government services. Moon (2002) developed a framework for categorizing e-government models based on the following components: information dissemina- tion, two-way communication, services, integration, and political participation.
Our methodology for evaluating e-government services includes such components;
however, we have added an additional factor of security.
That additional e-governance factor was grounded in recent calls for increased security, particularly of our public information infrastructure. Concern over the security of the information systems underlying government applications has led some researchers to the conclusion that e-governance must be built on a secure infrastructure that respects the privacy of its users (Kaylor, 2001).
The 2005 E-Governance Performance Index differs slightly from the one used in 2003. The most significant change was in the citizen participation component, where six new research questions were added. These new questions are, in part, recognition of the growing literature focusing on the various methods for more digitally-based democracy. These new questions survey the presence and functions of municipal forums, online decision making (e.g., e-petitions and e-referenda), and online sur- veys and polls. The new questions for the citizen participation component bring the total number of questions to 20, with a total possible raw score of 55. In addition, one question was removed from the security and privacy component. That question focused on the scanning of viruses during downloadable files from the municipal Web site. This aspect was found to be more dependent on personal computers than as a function of a municipal Web site. The removal of the question for the security and privacy component brings the total number of questions to 18, with a total pos- sible raw score of 25. The final change to the E-Governance Performance Index was a question added to the content component. The additional question focuses on the number of possible downloadable documents from a municipal Web site. The
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new question for content brings the total number of questions to 20, with a total possible raw score of 48.
The changes to the E-Governance Performance Index have helped make this ongoing survey of municipal Web sites one of the most thorough in the field of e-governance research. The Index now has a total of 98 questions, with a total possible raw score of 219. Given the changes to the survey instrument between 2003 and 2005, the method of weighting each component for a possible score of 20 and a total score of 100 allows for a consistency in comparisons over time. Table 2, which features e-governance performance measures, summarizes the 2005 survey instrument, and in Appendix A we present an overview of the criteria used during the evaluation.
Similar to our 2003 study, to ensure reliability each municipal Web site was as- sessed in the official language by two evaluators. Many of our evaluators were either doctoral students or researchers in the area of digital governance. In addition, all of the evaluators were provided comprehensive written instructions for assessing Web sites. The instructions and survey instrument itself included detailed examples for associated scores for each question. The two adjusted scores for each Web site were then compared and evaluated for consistency in evaluation. The evaluations were done via a preset spreadsheet instrument that alerted researchers when errors were made. Also, the instrument allowed for specific comments associated with each question, so that researchers can review in cases of evaluator discrepancy.
Each Web site evaluation was done independent of one another and in cases where significant variation (+ or – 10%) existed on the weighted score between evaluators,
E-governance.
Category Key..
Concepts Raw.
Score Weighted.
Score .
Keywords
Security/.Privacy 18 25 20 Privacy policies, authentication, encryption, data management, and use of cookies
Usability 20 32 20 User-friendly design, branding, length of homepage, targeted audience links or chan- nels, and site search capabilities
Content 20 48 20 Access to current accurate information, public documents, reports, publications, and multi- media materials
Service 20 59 20 Transactional services involving purchase or register, interaction between citizens, busi- nesses, and government
Citizen..
Participation 20 55 20 Online civic engagement, internet based policy deliberation, and citizen based perfor- mance measurement
Total 98 219 100
Table 2. E-governance performance measures
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Web sites were analyzed a third time. The only Web site requiring a third evaluator for the 2005 survey was Brussels, Belgium. The three evaluations for Brussels were then reviewed and scores averaged to represent a municipal score. A framework of the survey instrument utilized is included in Appendix A.